he would not have ventured so far; but the sun was out, the day long, the gulls quietly soaring over the sea, and on he went, giving no thought whatever to his return.
Once under the cliff, he ventured farther. Detached from it, there lies Nanny's Rock, which must long ago have fallen from above; the breakers surrounded but did not sweep it when they rose and broke.
His wish to lie there in the sunshine, with the blue sky above him and the noise of the water in his ears, led him to dash across the dripping space between when the wave fell back, even though he must scramble out of the way of the returning water.
In a few minutes he was deep in an enchanting day-dream, which, to his subsequent peril, soon changed to sleep.
The tide was rising. A few drops of spray, falling upon his face from a great breaker, awoke him. On the instant he was wide awake and looking desperately about. Then he laughed to think that the breakers were reaching for him – that they would have had him fast in the trap had he slept much longer; for, in a glance, he thought he had made sure that his escape from the rock was not yet cut off. But his laugh was touched with some embarrassment when he found, upon trial, that the sea had blocked the path by which he had reached the foot of Shag Cliff.
"I must go 'tother way," he thought.
There was no other way; to right and to left the sea was breaking against overhanging juts of rock. He could pass from jut to jut, but he could round neither.
"Sure, I'll be late for dinner," he thought; "an' dad won't like it."
It was all very well to exclaim vexatiously, but he was forced to abandon the hope of returning by way of the foot of the cliffs. The tide had cut him off.
"I'll scale Shag Cliff," he determined.
He was not alarmed; the situation was awkward, but it promised the excitement of an adventure, and for a time he was rather glad that he had fallen asleep. To scale the two hundred feet of Shag Cliff – that was something to achieve! His father would say that he was "narvy," and forget that he had kept him from his dinner. Scale Shag Cliff, by all means!
He knew well enough that he had but to seek higher ground and wait for the tide to fall, if he wanted an unexciting return; but it pleased him to make believe that his situation was desperate – that the rising water would overwhelm him if he did not escape over the brow of the cliff: an indulgence which his imagination did not need half an hour later. When he looked up, however, to choose a path of ascent, he found that, from where he stood, close against the cliff at the base, there seemed to be no path at all.
"I 'low I'll have t' go back t' Nanny's Rock for a better squint," he told himself.
Back to Nanny's Rock he went, at no small risk, for the occasional flow of foam, which had cut it off from the mainland when first he crossed, had swollen to a strait of some depth and strength. He must make the leap, but he dreaded it. There was a moment of terror when his foot slipped, and he came near falling back into the very claws of the breaker which followed him; on that account, perhaps, his survey of the face of the cliff was a hurried one, and his return to safe ground precipitate and somewhat flurried.
He had seen enough, however, to persuade him that the ascent would be comparatively easy for at least a hundred feet, and that, for the rest of the way, it would not, probably, be much more difficult.
In point of fact, he knew nothing whatever of what lay beyond the first hundred feet. But the element of probability, or rather improbability, did not disconcert him. He could at least make a start.
If you have ever climbed about a rocky sea-coast, you will know that an ascent may be comparatively simple where a descent is quite impracticable; you will know that the unwary may of a sudden reach a point where to continue the climb is a nauseating necessity. There are times when one regrets the courage that led him into his difficulty – the courage or the carelessness, as the case may be.
Experience had long ago taught Billy Topsail that; but the lesson had not been severe – there had been no gulf behind him; the whip of life or death had not urged him on. Indeed, he had never attempted a climb of such height and ugly possibilities in the way of blind leads as Shag Cliff, else possibly he should not have made the start with a sense of adventure so inspiring.
Up he went – up and still up, his cheeks glowing, his nerves pleasurably tingling! Up – up and still up, until he could hear the whiz of gulls' wings near him, and the feeling of space below began to try his nerves. At last he stopped to rest and look about. Down deep lay the breakers, so far off, it seemed, that he marvelled he could hear the roar and crash so distinctly.
"An' they says 'tis a hundred feet!" thought he. "Hut! 'Tis two hundred if 'tis an inch. An' I isn't but half way up!"
Beyond that point his difficulties began. The cliff was bolder; it was almost bare of those little ledges and crevices and projections upon which the cliff-climber depends for handhold and foothold. Moreover, the path was interrupted from time to time by sheer or overhanging rock. When he came to these impassable places, of course, he turned to right or left, content with his progress if only he mounted higher and higher. Thus he strayed far off the path he had picked out from Nanny's Rock; indeed, he was climbing blindly, a thoughtless course, for – had he but stopped to think – there was no knowing that the cliff did not overhang at the end of the way he had taken.
Meanwhile, time was passing. He had climbed with such caution, retraced his steps, changed his course so often that noon was long past. So when next he came to a roomy ledge he sat down to rest before proceeding farther.
"Wonderful queer!" he thought, after a look about. "But where is I?"
It was a puzzling question. The cliff, projecting below him, cut off his view of the breakers; and the rock above, which came to an end in blue sky, was of course unfamiliar. At what part of Shag Rock he then was he could not tell.
CHAPTER VI
In Which Billy Topsail Loses His Nerve. Wherein, also, the Wings of Gulls Seem to Brush Past
"WONDERFUL queer!" thought Billy Topsail. "Lost on a cliff! 'Tis the queerest thing I ever knowed."
But that was Billy's case.
"I 'low," he concluded, at last, "that I'd better be goin' up instead o' down."
It did not appear that he would be unable to go down; the way up was the shorter way, that was all. Nevertheless, his feeling of security was pretty well shaken when he again began to climb. His grip was tighter, his shrinking from the depths stronger and more frequent; in fact, he hugged the rock more than was good for him.
He knew the symptom for an alarming one – it turned him faint when first he recognized it – and he tried to fix his attention upon the effort to climb higher. But now and again the fear of the space behind and below would creep in. Reason told him that the better part was to return; but he was in no condition to listen to reason. His whole desire – it was fast becoming frantic – was to crawl over the brow of the cliff and be safe.
But where was the brow of the cliff? It seemed to him that he had climbed a thousand feet.
A few minutes later he caught sight of a shrub; then he knew that he was within a few feet of the end of the climb. The shrub – a stunted spruce, which he had good reason to remember – was to his right, peeping round a projection of rock.
He was then on a ledge, with good foothold and good handhold; and a way of return to the shore lay open to him. By craning his neck he made out that if he could pass that projection he would reach
